


the desire And the spasm

by grassle



Series: the desire And the spasm [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 21:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassle/pseuds/grassle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I do not own these characters from the BBC's Sherlock</p><p>In <i>The Blind Banker</i>, when he catches Sherlock using his laptop, John is quite defensive about it. Needlessly defensive, I thought. Unless...John is trying to write a bloody awful novel! Not so much a <i>roman à clef</i> as a romance which should be kept under lock and key?</p><p>"Between the desire/And the spasm/Between the potency/And the existence/Between the essence/And the descent/Falls the Shadow."</p><p><i>The Hollow Men</i><br/>T.S. Eliot</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

“Lower case B!” hissed Sherlock in annoyance. “There’s always something.”

Five goes it had taken him to crack John’s password, thanks to having to figure out just where the underscores would be – John loved underscores – and that the B was not capped in J0hnWats0n_Sherl0ckH0lmes_221b. Although, five tries wasn’t too bad. He’d been far from having to get up and get his own computer from the bedroom – much too distant - and far from having to get John’s iPod to listen to the recently played songs to get into John’s mindset when he’d set his last password. If he had to listen to Westlife again, he’d– No, Sherlock had heard John typing in his password and deduced from the keystrokes it was something along those lines.

He’d used to do that at uni, figure out other students’ passwords for their e-mail accounts. Just as an exercise; he couldn’t have cared less about their pathetic, sordid little lives. Sherlock opened his own e-mail, and was hit by a name from the past. From uni, in fact – had his reminiscing conjured it up? That was why it was better to delete stuff. But this was good. Very good. So Mr Sebastian Bastard Wilkes needed Sherlock’s help, did he? There must be big trouble at the bank. Oh, shame.

Sherlock was torn between ignoring it and sending as a reply a picture of himself sticking the Vs up and CCing both message and reply to everyone in the bank’s e-mail directory. As he debated it and answered other e-mails in his account and messages to his Web site, he defragmented the disk, updated the virus protection, cleared the cache and deleted the cookies. How could people only do one thing at a time? Must be so boring.

Sherlock noticed a folder labelled CV, PDFs OF CERTIFICATES and idly double-clicked. Locked? Password protected? What? What would John have to lock away? Not embarrassing photos. Sherlock had viewed the ones of drunk army-John getting his tattoo on his ahem, nether regions, even drunker army-John in full make-up and drag (don’t ask, don’t tell), med student-John (drunk?) in bed with (a much thinner) Mike Stamford, saucer-eyed on-furlough-John cross-legged in a Bedouin tent clasping a hookah and a hook- Well, suffice to say, John’s slideshow screensaver was more entertaining than most daytime and even some primetime TV, and not a source of shame. Derision, maybe, but not dishonour.

J0HN_3C0NT1N3NT5_WAT50N was the only password Sherlock had time to try before the man himself came back, snatched his laptop away with more force than was necessary, and his financial embarrassment led to Sherlock accepting the Shad Sanderson job. (Sherlock refused to use the dire names John gave to their cases when he described them. Honestly – The Adventure of the Semen Stain? The Case of the Invisible Client? A Candle in Bohemia? _Really_.)

Sherlock pushed the mystery to the back of his mind for the duration of the case, and it wasn’t until they were out one evening with Amanda, helping her spend some of her reward money that Sherlock suddenly knew the password for the locked file.

John liked Amanda (well, she was female), and Sherlock had a fondness for her. He enjoyed the way she’d quit her job by telling everyone she worked with what she really thought of them, calling Sherlock’s mobile first so he could hear her doing it. Sherlock had particularly enjoyed Sebastian’s craven “Don’t hit me! Not another one!” which had led to John confessing he’d punched Seb in the face after Seb had handed over the cheque for their fee.

“It was something about him. His watch. Or his tie. No, his teeth,” was all the explanation John could give.

Amanda, who’d obviously read John’s blog, had bought up most of the tickets to the lecture Sherlock’s archnemesis (no; not that one) Dr Brian Cox was giving to tie in with his hit TV series _The Wonders of The Solar System_ , so the famous physicist was lecturing to a half-empty space. The space was, however, made fuller by the three of them, two of whom were more than slightly sloshed - Amanda had celebrated her newfound wealth by staying drunk for a week, and John couldn’t hold his drink - and feeling mischievous.

“Cox the Fox!” yelled John.

“Cheer up; Things Can Only Get Better!” Amanda catcalled, then, as Dr Cox bent over to retrieve the proton balls he’d dropped in his nervousness, “Oh look, I can see Uranus!”

“How Dare you? It’s a wormhole!” called John back, and even Sherlock cried, “Show us your black hole!” before he started a Mexican Wave-Particle. They all giggled as they watched the security men debating the merits of throwing them out vs. a lecturer speaking to a mostly deserted hall.

Amanda took them to supper, and Sherlock pretended not to understand John’s ‘hop it; I’m think I’m in here’ winks and twitches, just for the fun of watching his St Vitus’s Dance contortions and hearing Amanda ask him if he needed the loo. But he excused himself when the idea of going clubbing was mooted and made his way home.

Pouring a Malibu and his mixer of choice, he entered The_S0lar_Syst3m when prompted and opened the file.

“I’m in, grand-père,” he told the skull he’d placed on the desk in front of him. The file he’d opened housed another, named NOVEL IDEAS. Was John a secret inventor? Or some sort of existential philosopher? Unlikely. This file was also password protected. He steepled his fingers in thought, and remembering information he’d learnt that evening, typed in JUP1T3R. Several more files were revealed to him, their names TITLES, BLURB, PLOT, CHARACTERS, SCENES, and intriguingly, S SCENES. Sherlock took a long swig of drink and started matching planets to folders. SA7URN accessed TITLES, and Sherlock spluttered Malibu down his shirt as he read a list, and understood a) John was writing a novel, and b) it was going to be so bloody awful, it would make his Blog a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

**Detecting the Heart.**

**The Detected Heart.**

**Deducing the Heart.**

**The Deduced Heart.**

Sherlock averted his eyes for a minute and scowled at the skull’s grin. This wasn’t funny. Was it? Well, maybe, a little.

**Detecting Love.**

**Deducing Love.**

**Detected Love.**

**Deduced Love.**

“Lay off the participle adjectives, John,” Sherlock muttered.

**Undetected Love.**

Oh, a bit of variety there. “Go Team Prefix!” murmured Sherlock.

 **The Undetected Heart.** Well, of course.

 **Detecting Desire.** Oh, a new theme.

 **Undetected Desire.** Why not **Undetecting Desire**? Complete the set?

**Unacted Desire.**

Then underneath, inexplicably, **Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.**

“Oh, John, John. Have you been at the _Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_ again?” Sherlock tsked.

He wondered if there was a poll somewhere so he could cast his vote, then moved fittingly via URANU5 to PLOT, stopping for a glug of drink en route.

Dare he go on? Should he go on? Yes, of course.

**Hard-boiled NYPD cop is forced to work with hard-boiled army soldier to crack a case or other.**

Smirking at the unwitting juxtaposition of hard boiled and crack, and wondering if John had ever been to the States, Sherlock moved to the next few.

**Case-hardened New England detective is teamed up with newly invalided-out English soldier because**

**Cynical US detective is paired with army medic /special ops person and they have to crack a case within short time and have to share a house to prevent**

**Hard-bitten Cape Cod - nice name: n.b. get map of US.**

Why couldn’t John finish a train of thought? Actually, it was probably better for the world of publishing he didn’t, but… And what was his fascination with the US?

Amazingly, it was only when Sherlock opened the file marked NAMES (MAR5) that the most horrifying fact about John’s magnum opus struck him. He swore he didn’t blink once as he ran a horrified eye down the list of possible character names.

**Sheridan Horn**

**Sherborne Homes**

**Sheppard Hymes**

**Shayan Haines**

**Sheldon Hawk**

**Shelby Hughes**

**Shayne Hunt**

**Shamus Hayes**

**Shaw Helm**

**Shadrack Holt**

**Shade Hale**

**Shadow Hope**

**Sheffield Hern**

And at the bottom, in size 16 font and bold, was typed … **Sherwood Stone**

Swinging between horror and glee, wishing he could argue in favour of Shadow Hope, hoping he wouldn’t come across any _Romancing the Stone_ or _Heart of Stone_ references, Sherlock gritted his teeth and read the putative names for the second character in what was shaping up to be an m/m - and how! - thriller. Was John actively writing in this genre, or did he just not know enough about women to create a heroine? Clearly, he’d never got Mrs Hudson talking about her past.

**Jack Wolfdon**

**Jock Wheelan**

**Jacques Winters**

**Jeff Western**

**Jac Wisdom**

**Jared Wooton**

**Jase Whitten**

**Jael Whiskey**

Sherlock thought the last had a ring to it, but read out loud the final name and the comment next to it:

“ **Jake Weston** for the win!”

Sherwood, that is Sherlock, was forced to get up and walk around the living room for a few minutes to clear his head – if that were possible without brain bleach – before sitting back down and opening with shaking fingers the file designated BLURB. In addition to writing the sodding “novel,” John, who had evidently confused books with films, was seemingly saving the marketing department a job by writing his own tagline:

 **Who needs a heart, when hearts can be broken? (Nb is this a song? Sounds like a song)** was the first line to assail his eyes.

**He was married to his work – but all work and no play made Stone (No doesn’t work.)**

Sherlock agreed with that assessment.

**Married to his work: Sherwood was about to discover polygamy.**

Sherlock actually got rather alarmed at this point and cast a nervous glance around the room.

**Sherwood’s married to his work. Jake’s married to his unit. Together, they’re –**

Adulterers? wondered Sherlock.

**He could deduce everything – except his own feelings. And Jake’s.**

Oh, what?

**48 hrs to save his heart. (No, sounds like a cadaveric transplant.)**

Sherlock agreed with John there, and the skull grinned manically.

“Oh, come on, _pepere_. He’s trying,” argued Sherlock.

There was a single ring, nothing more, on Sherlock’s mobile. He’d put an early warning system in place, and this trill meant John was passing the supermarket down the street, Tesco Tony’s nighttime abode. It also meant John’s laptop could be back in his room and Sherlock curled up watching crap telly by the time John thudded up the stairs and slammed into the living room.

“I suppose your rotten mood means you got no action, as per usual?” Sherlock enquired.

“I’m not having this conversation. Sherlock, are you drinking _Malibu and milk_?”

“Yes, I enjoy the odd tipple from time to time.”

“But that’s a _pint glass_!”

“Indeed.”

“With a crazy straw.”

“Your point being?”

“But that’s...wait. Is that – is that why – _Sherlock!_ I’m always buying milk, and we’re always out! Is that where it goes?”

“Oh, I suppose you’d prefer I drink it with some revolting teeth-corroding, liver-melting 'fizzy pop'. Some doctor you are. Forgive me if I take my leave.”

And Sherlock Holmes, AKA Sherwood Stone, master of deflection as well as detection, snatched up his bottle of Malibu and swanned off to bed, already plotting how to get his hands on John’s lap. _Laptop_ , goddammit.


	2. Chapter Two

It first began, or he first noticed it – which for Sherlock was the same thing – four days later, manifested in a jiggling of his right leg as he sat reading John’s latest issue of the _Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery_. He planted his foot firmly on the floor and busied himself in clinical features of basaloid squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. Then the thoughts started to waft in, soft and insidious at first, but sharpening, as the idea - he wouldn’t call it a craving - firmed. His fingers scrunched the pages they held.

Why not, just once? It would actually be a useful exercise in self-control, show he was perfectly able to do it just once and then no more. That would be a good test. But Sherlock knew that was self-justification and so resolutely focussed on the amount of traumatic pericardial rupture a fifty-foot fall onto concrete had caused a young male, which gave him an idea for an experiment, but…

He’d denied himself for so long. Been so good for ages. He deserved a little treat, a tiny modicum of relaxation. didn’t he? Who was to know, for one thing? Oh, sod and bollocks. He was twitching, hooked. No denying it. He threw the journal aside in irritation.

He had to read more of John’s novel. Once resolved on his course of action, Sherlock began to suspect some of John’s no doubt deathless prose must have entered his blood as he found himself sweeping through the flat like a whirling dervish, then howling like a banshee once he realised John must have taken his laptop to work with him. In that crappy khaki canvas satchel he used, not even buying a case for it. Hell and damnation.

Being deprived of something made him want him more. He’d bloody go the surgery and steal it. Not like this though. He’d have to sneak in incognito… Sherlock then spent a good few hours disguising himself as a girl – having to go out for more fashionable female attire and on-trend make-up than he had in his possession – so he barely had time to change back and scrub his face before John came home. John gave him a funny look before sweeping Sherlock’s eyelash curlers off his chair to sit down. He kept his ratty old bag by the side of his chair, tapped away on his computer after dinner and took both bag and laptop to his room when he went to bed. But Sherlock had a plan to nick the computer and render the satchel unusable. He waited a bit first, though, before sneaking into John’s room.

“What are you doing, Sherlock?”

There’s no need to be such a light sleeper, Sherlock thought bitterly, or to wake up and immediately pull a gun on someone. He was forced to take quick evasive action.

“I’m sleepwalking, John.”

He opened his eyes wide and stared fixedly at nothing and stretched out his arms in front of him at right angles to the floor, forgetting one hand held a torch and the other the scissors with which he been planning to sever the strap of John’s bag.

“Well, don’t. You look stupid.” And John flopped down and went back to sleep, finger still on the trigger.

Sherlock left in a huff. He knew he should have gone with the ghost idea. If only he hadn’t been too lazy to go and whip the sheet off his bed. Well, no point in keeping a dog and barking himself. He’d call in an expert. Or two.

 

“Give us yer bag.”

John looked steadily at the two insalubrious youths in front of him on the quiet street and said, “No.”

The blokes looked at each other.

“’And it over. I’ve gotta knife,” said Zitface.

“What sort?” asked John.

“Do what?”

“Show me,” requested John.

Zitface looked at Mouthbreather, who shrugged.

“Do more ’n that if you don’t give us yer bag,” Zitface threatened, brandishing said knife.

“Oh, a BlackJack Halo Attack. Nice. Good balance, the BlackJacks, hey? I see you’ve got the finger-grooved handle. Don’t suppose I could have a –”

“I’ve gotta knife too!” cried Mouthbreather. John nodded in encouragement, and Mouthbreather produced it.

“That’s a lovely little Stanley knife,” praised John. “I used to use one similar to that when I did woodwork at school. But look what I’ve got!” He produced his gun from the back of his waistband. “This is a bit like ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ isn’t it?” he continued, smiling.

“This ain’t Show ‘n’ Tell. I’m gonna take yer bag–eek! Gerrof! Spider, ’elp us!”

But Spider took one look at Zitface pinned flat to the pavement and fled. John stopped twisting the mugger’s arm up behind his back and let him kneel, keeping the knife trapped between his foot and the floor. He frisked the assailant for the leather sheath.

“I should call the police. Lucky for you I’m in a rush to get to work. Performance appraisals this week, so I can’t be late back from lunch. Hoppit, spotty.”

John booted the youth up his backside as he started to run, chuckling as he fell forwards onto his hands and knees with a squeal. John picked up the knife, wiped it off, slotted it into its holder, slid it down his waistband next to the gun and trotted back to the surgery. He wanted a good review – there was a bonus involved.

Much later at home, he tapped on the bathroom door, then knocked louder to be heard over the sounds of scrubbing.

“Erm, Sherlock, what are you doing in there?”

“Having a bath, evidently.”

“It’s just you’ve been in there for three hours now.”

“Yes?”

“With a whole bottle of Flash.”

“And?”

“And the Mr Muscle.”

“I felt the need to…disinfect myself. It’s been a difficult day, what with one thing and another I’ve had to do. Please respect my ablutions, John. I don’t interrupt you in the mornings when you’re ‘taking care of business.’”

The dawn of a new day persuaded Sherlock that strangers hadn’t been the way to go. In times like these, one needed family. He took up his phone, smiling at his plan. John wouldn’t take his computer with him when he went to meet–

“Harry, how are you?”

“Oh, I knew you’d come crawling back, ringing me, asking me how I am like the dog that you are returning to its vomit. Don’t think you can get round me with a few silver-tongued words, you uncaring, unfeeling piece of–”

“Harry, it’s Sherlock!”

“I know, stupid. I’m practicing for when Clara rings. In fact, call me again – I don’t think the dog/vomit thing works, and I want to try another idea. Then tell me which was best. Go on, NOW!”

Sherlock rang off and didn’t call again. There seemed only one sure way to get John out of the house for the evening, short of Mycroft kidnapping him…

“Amanda.” He deepened his voice to the knicker-dropping velvet baritone he’d perfected over the years.

“Sherlock! Lovely to hear from you. I was just thinking–”

“I must see you. At once.”

 

Maybe he should have waited. She was being shown over a possible new house by a little man with a big clipboard who did his best to broaden his sales patter to include the newly arrived Sherlock.

“This reception area is ample for entertaining, and this living space large enough…”

“For living?” asked Sherlock, wondering why estate agents were allergic to the word “room.”

“And this lovely garden is a boon, if you like to cook.”

“Even if one doesn’t, surely?” queried Sherlock.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have to be a chef to appreciate the garden, he means,” explained Amanda.” You don’t even have to grow veg, or herbs. You could grow poisonous plants, Sherlock, and study toxins. This room here would make a great–”

“Conservatory!” chipped in the man.

“Laboratory,” said Amanda. “I know you don’t have much space to work in your flat. We could fit one out… Well, the offer’s there.”

“That’s what I want to speak to you about,” Sherlock cut in over bleating about the master bedroom suite. “It’s John. He and you.”

“Two master bedroom suites, both with king-size beds. Smaller rooms for children. And a den,” the man carried on valiantly.

“I have to bow out. He’s bagsied you, you see. I have no choice.”

“Bags of closet space…”

“What does that mean?”

 _How to put it in girl terms?_ “He believes you and he are made for each other. As his friend, I have to put aside my feelings and in fact stand aside, give him the chance to make you see that.”

“Oh, sod the bloody bro code!” Amanda thumped her fist down on the kitchen countertop, then shook it, wincing.

“Italian polished natural marble,” pointed out the increasingly unhappy man.

“Vein-cut stone?” Amanda asked, then shook her head. “So you’re here on his behalf? What do you expect me to do?”

“Merely let him, er, woo you. Allow him to show himself at his best. He’s very athletic and sporty. Some sort of date that doesn’t involve sitting in a restaurant.”

“I suppose I could, if you think that’s the fair thing to do. You’re very noble, Sherlock.”

“I’m _really_ not. In fact, just in case...” Sherlock ignored the little man’s proffered ruler with the firm’s name on it and snapped open his self-retracting tape measure with a whir of metal to measure up for the lab.

 

“Let’s see,” said Sherlock a few hours later. “You’ve ironed your shirt. I thought I’d mentioned about the ironing board, but obviously not. You’ve shaved. And put loo roll on the cuts. Sorry I blunted the razor, by the way. I used it to…well, probably best you don’t know. You’ve splashed on what you thought was aftershave. Yes, I forgot to tell you I repurposed the bottle. You’re whistling 'Luck, be a Lady Tonight'. Could you possibly have a date?”

“Yes.” John was still rubbing the grease stains off his shirtfront with one hand and trying to dab salve onto his face and avoid all the squares of white paper stuck on it with the other. “With Amanda, actually. I know you like her, but…”

“And where are you going?”

John raised an eyebrow – he must’ve copied that gesture from Mycroft – and Sherlock  
sighed.

“I promise on Mrs Hudson’s life I won’t follow you or turn up there.”

When John tried to raise the other eyebrow to the exact same position as the first, Sherlock held out his phone. “And you can take this so I can’t call you.”

“Ice skating. That outdoor rink at the riverside? Then there’s mulled wine and carols after. Some sort of Victorian evening thing.”

“Well, keep your Dickens in your trousers, and you should be fine,” was Sherlock’s sage advice.

His smile was huge as John left the flat without his laptop, and he threw the skull from hand to hand in triumph, wishing they had a basketball hoop on the wall somewhere.

Sherlock set his stall up – crazy straw and bottle of Baileys. Not a patch on Malibu in his opinion, but it didn’t need a mixer, meaning John couldn’t use it as an excuse to vent his frustration on him in another brutal attack when he returned home having struck out again. He set the skull down in front of him and typed N3PTUN3 to open the file marked SCENES.

He was confronted by what purported to be a chase through the mean streets of New York, but which seemed remarkably like London to him. Down shortcuts, along back alleys; through shop delivery bays, across pub courtyards; up fire escapes; over rooftops; leaping from building to building – why did this route seem familiar? He understood when he clicked on a hyperlink – _didn’t think John knew how to do those_ – and got the online _London A-Z_. John was obviously a stickler for verisimilitude and had recreated their first chase, every single avenue, street, road, lane, alley and thoroughfare: hell, every paving stone, Underground air vent and manhole cover was pounded by Sherwood’s and Jake’s flying feet. Readers would certainly get value for money. And possibly blisters. Maybe John could work out some marketing deal whereby Elastoplast sponsored the novel.

But what about those who had been led to expect a New York background? No, wait, here were some Americanisms: asphalt, sidewalk, garbage cans, trash collectors, waste truck, Dumpsters, sanitation workers, janitor-green colored uniforms… Sherlock narrowed his eyes. He knew John's love of _Apocalypse Now_ had given him a soft spot for anything starring any member of the Sheen family, but was his entire knowledge of life and work in the US gleaned from the Charlie Sheen/Emilio Estevez oeuvre _Men at Work_?


	3. Chapter Three

Resigned to seeing this through to the bitter end, Sherlock followed in the pounding footsteps of the two heroes in their pursuit of or flight from some as-yet-unnamed quarry/hunter, although there were cryptic references to “Fat Tony” and “Big Louie.” Were all mobsters overweight? If so, surely they wouldn’t require much chasing after? Couldn’t the streetwise Jake trap them with a box of ‘donuts’ left strategically somewhere?

'"Stone’s long lean legs ate up the pavement and sidewalk,"' read Sherlock aloud to the skull, rolling his eyes at John’s hedging of his linguistic bets and his notion – dangerous for a doctor – that legs were capable of ingestion.

Sherlock tore himself away from form to content and decided he’d best go easy on John for his lack of commas between coordinate adjectives. If John hadn’t grasped this when Sherlock had kindly corrected his Blog posts, it seemed John and the comma were destined to remain as strangers.

Not total strangers, however. More like drunken acquaintances. Sherlock couldn’t help but notice the breathless, almost Joycean prose John was fond of using to write up their cases, with its sentences that didn’t so much as run on as play hopscotch along the way, had been employed here too. He had hoped John would actually look up some literary conventions for his excursion into the world of the Novel, but apparently not if _Sherwood and Jake ran like the wind, they needed to catch those scum before they detonated the stolen bomb_ , was any indication. Who was planning to detonate the bomb? The way it read, the odds were even between the portly gangland baddies and the presumably somewhat footsore goodies.

 _Sherwood’s long lean coat flapped in the wind like a cloak of myth._ Oh, where to start in this myth-staken endeavour?

“Why not a cloak of invisibility? Then Sherwood could sneak up on Obese Luigi and…and surely a heavy winter coat is not optimum chase-wear?”

He took his grandfather’s silence for assent and continued reading, peeping out from a slit between the fingers of the hand he had covering his eyes. And that hand was shaking. Any minute now he’d be forced behind the sofa to continue, much as he had while watching _Dr Who_ as a child. Those sodding daleks… And that time Mycroft had upended the plastic laundry basket over himself, stuck a plunger through the slats and crawled into Sherlock’s room at midnight intoning, “ _Exterminate!_ ” Not funny. At all. As unfunny as the going away to university present of dalek pyjamas. And it didn’t still haunt his nightmares. Not one bit.

_“Goddamitt, we lost him! If only we’d done it my way!” Barked Sherwood._

  
_“Its always your way or the Highway, goddammit!” Barked back Jake. “We could of…” But he stared at Sherwood’s long lean form and lost his train of thought midstream._

He was more than grateful John hadn’t supplied the name of the no doubt long lean highway in question and mapped out its entire route, turn-offs and service stations included. But why was there so much barking? Were Sherwood and Jake half men, half dogs? Was there going to be some cunning were-canine twist? He should be so lucky.

“And stir metaphors into glass and mix,” he muttered, wincing anew at the train and stream imagery.

_The two men ran racing madly like sprinters going for gold. Jake slowed, and stopped. He halted, and listened. Sherwood rounded the corner, and braked also. Jake was still. Stock still. As still as death, breathing like a racehorse finishing the National. The men pursuing them raced past their hidey-hole among the Dumpsters, loosing the detective and the soldier among the garbage cans._

“AARGH! Are you doing this on purpose?” he screamed to his absent flatmate, ignoring the annoying euphemisms and the sad near misses with lexis to focus on the grammar, or flagrant – or as John would probably put it, fragrant – lack thereof. It must be a plot of John’s to drive Sherlock mad. John wanted him stark raving bonkers so he could – wait, could he be in the pay of Mycroft, trying to get Sherlock committed to a mental institution? That was just the sort of thing his brother would do, just to see if he could, but why would John go along with it? If he’d wanted the bigger bedroom, he only had to say. Sherlock made a mental note to buy milk occasionally and not to use John’s toothbrush and razor for – well, anything at all, just to keep him on side.

But oh, how his fingers itched to correct the punctuation. Was it possible John had reached the ripe age of whatever it was – fifty? - in blissful ignorance of the rules governing compound predicates? Even being ignorant, wouldn’t the law of probability dictate he’d get it right fifty percent of the time? No. Instead it seemed John stood over his page with a salt shaker of commas in one hand and a pepper pot of apostrophes in the other, flailed his arms about, and let his punctuation fall where it may.

Sherlock cast his glass aside and stuck his straw straight into the bottle of Baileys for a healthy slurp. Look at that. John had even driven him to drink. Perhaps that was their plot, to make him a raging alcoholic, shouting out insults at people, forgetting to eat, not sleeping, not even getting dressed for days on end– Oh what a coincidence: the chase was back on, with the intrepid duo approaching a bar.

_“Through here?” Sherwood questioned anxiously. “You’re sure this will save time?”_

_“It’s a short cut bar none!” replied his partner suavely._

With a savage twist of his lips, Sherlock realised he would have to veto Bond nights if watching 007 led to John’s attempts at a pun Oh, more–

_Jake paused in his hurried yet smooth dash, and picked up an drink, that the buxom barmaid had just placed on the bar, and downed it in one swift motion. “One for the road, or rather the alley,” he quipped suavely._

That settled it. Sherlock was setting fire to all of John’s 007 DVDs right now. He’d start with the Roger Moore ones, then in a separate pyre the Sean Connery ones and make it look like an accident. Pierce, he’d keep back. Then suddenly the writing seemed to get a little better, a little faster paced, more…exciting?

Sherlock shook the bottle, seeing how much was left and how much he must have drunk to achieve that. The shadowy villains leapt into a car – hopefully an open-top sports model, as they couldn’t have nipped in through the windows if they were still the same lardarses from earlier - and Sherwood and Jake were forced to up their game to follow.

The two navigated the obstacles in their way, jumping bollards and more bloody dustbins AKA trashcans, climbing statues and monuments for some reason, rolling under railings, swinging through gaps between pillars, vaulting one-handed over cars and children, scaling walls and dropping and rolling to the ground again, pulling themselves up into trees and lampposts to hang and jump down the other side of an obstruction. They even travelled along what was now a freeway, leaping from lorry to truck in true transatlantic fashion. It was only when they cut through a construction site that things started to look familiar, and Sherlock made up his mind to burn all the Daniel Craig Bond films too.

After that, the change of pace heralded by a scene set indoors was a welcome break, even if Jake feasted his eyes on his buddy coming out of the shower, long lean legs and torso – doubtless long lean, thought Sherlock - shining like a moonlit night. _“It’s all yours,” he said in his skimpy towel, and Jake swallowed._

Sherlock accidentally spat drink on the screen at this point, not so much at John correctly joining two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction as the scary place his mind had taken him to. He wiped the monitor clean with a sleeve and read on, turning the skull to face well away for its own protection. Oh, Jake was merely swallowing in nervousness.

_Watching the tall dark man vanish into his bedroom, the shorter man heard the rustle of clothes being dressed, and felt a stirring in his lions, and wanted –_

Wait. _Lions?_ Oh, for God's sake. Sherlock rolled his eyes so much, he could have illustrated a _Lancet_ case report on oculogyric crisis. He turned the skull back round and swore its eye sockets were rotating in sympathy with his suffering.

“LOINS, John, LOINS. Most people don't keep the world's second-largest living cat down their trousers. ”

He began to feel prurient and somewhat dirty, but couldn’t make himself stop. This was wrong, he knew, but so addictive. He could picture the sketchily described third-floor walk up and its two inhabitants, the tall, thin dark-haired man and his blond, slightly shorter – oh, come on, John! – and more muscle-bound companion who was just beginning to understand he lusted after his taller partner. Did Sherwood know? Jake seemed to think so, going by the state of his narrative:

_Such a goddam tiny towel. He surely wore it to tantalize Jake. And Jake sure as hell felt tantalized. Mission accomplished. He felt more tantalized than Tantalus ever had, and the drink he wanted was right in front of him. And it wasn’t water. No sirree._

Oh, hel-lo. And Sherlock felt a stirring in his own erm, lions. Talk about lions after slumber. God. He told himself it wasn’t weird to feel aroused by this in this way, it didn’t mean he was– Because this starred himself, making it just a convoluted form of masturbation. Masturbation once-removed? Narcissism, maybe? Unimaginative, certainly.

Feeling sick (he should have stuck with the Malibu), Sherlock shut down the laptop and returned it to its not very well hidden hiding place. He just had time to pretend to be doing something else before there was noise downstairs. Attuned to the speed and volume of John’s footsteps up the stairs, Sherlock deduced there’d been zero action, or at best a patronising good-night kiss, and that there was something amiss with John.

Ice skating + hot wine + a man incapable of holding his drink at the best of times, and doubtlessly much less so on ice almost certainly = something Amanda had hopefully caught on camera. He’d have to call her first thing.

“What are you doing?” were John’s words at seeing Sherlock sitting in his chair with a newspaper over his lap.

“Reading, evidently.” Sherlock waved the book in his hands.

“It’s upside down.”

“It’s Chinese.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I’m translating it.”

There was a pause, during which both men wondered where the hell this could go. John cracked first, as per usual, patting at the white bandage wound around most of his head and readjusting the ice pack over his eye – one would have thought he’d have had enough of ice for one evening. He did not look at the newspaper strategically placed over Sherlock’s groin, obviously covering an erection, and did not ask how the blue hell reading _The True Story of Jack the Ripper_ gave Sherlock a boner.

Instead he said, “I’m not having this conversation,” and turned to go.

“That’s right, slink off to your lair like a cowardly LION!” shouted Sherlock to the empty room.

He smirked and even got up to find his own computer. He had a lot of quotes and sayings with the word “lion” in them to look up. How many could he trot out before John realised something was afoot? A half-dozen at least, he was sure.


	4. Chapter Four

“God, I feel rough,” John croaked out as he came slowly down the stairs the next morning, late, still bandaged, and bruised.

“Like a dog?” enquired Sherlock.

“Yeah,” John said, swallowing around a dry mouth. He propped himself up against the kitchen door frame.

“Well, as they say, a living dog is better than a dead LION.”

John opened his mouth, presumably to ask, “Who says?” but Sherlock shut him up by sliding a slice of toast between his lips. He shoved John into his jacket, thrust a cup of tea laced with aspirin into his hand and turned him round to push him out of the flat, forcing a plastic box of leftover fish fingers into his pocket before he shut the door behind him. There. Sorted. Sherlock needed the place to himself today. Oh, damn. He could have got another one in…

“John! John, up here!” he yelled out of the window. “Are you seeing Amanda later?” Sherlock knew he was.

“She wants me to look at a house with her, give her a male perspective,” called John, spilling half his tea down his shirt as he gestured. “I’m not that keen, but she persuaded me.”

“Ah well, you see, the whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a LION,” yelled Sherlock. “Is her sister going as well?”

John nodded and apologised to the passerby the rest of his tea landed on.

“Be careful. A LION among ladies is a most dreadful thing,” Sherlock called and slammed the window shut with a smirk.

Amanda hadn’t enjoyed being woken at six a.m. by Sherlock’s request for footage of the ice rink incident. Nor had she appreciated Sherlock’s suggestion to post it on YouTube, if her reply was anything to go by: “Sherlock, what a thing to say. I’m ashamed of you, being so small-minded. I’ll have words with you later.”

She didn’t call, but texted him a link to a Website, and Sherlock was refreshing it compulsively, not just to see the clip of John from yesterday, but to vote repeatedly for him in the Accidental Ian Curtis Impression competition Amanda had entered him in. John was well ahead in the voting, and his page had been viewed nearly a thousand times already, which spelt good tidings for the owner, Jomanlock, in terms of advertising revenue. Amanda. So business-savvy.

Sherlock thought she must have had it professionally edited. The sight of John dropping a too-hot metal ladle with a curse back into a full punchbowl, making the hot wine cascade over his crotch and him spill his bag of roasted chestnuts, then stumble onto the ice and run across it backwards, shrieking, jerking and flailing as he still grappled with his hot chestnuts before spinning to a stop in the centre and falling to lie in a prone X position was made all the more poignant by being in slow-motion black and white and cut to the strains of Joy Division’s 'Atmosphere'.

Sherlock’s favourite bit was John lifting his head at the end, looking to the left then the right as if to assess if anyone had seen before looking down and pulling the most heartbreaking face upon realising he’d squashed his mince pies. He held up his crumb-covered hands in a mute agony of despair. This was when the greyscale faded up to colour, the slow, red ooze of blood on the white ice worthy of a German expressionist film, accompanied by the gasps of the crowd turning to muted cheers and handclaps. A boy dressed as a Dickensian urchin held up a hastily improvised sign bearing the numbers 3.0 to the camera.

Sherlock thought how sad John’s parents would be if they could see the fruit of their LIONS at that moment.

Once the blood had rushed back to his head from his erm, lower head last night, he’d cursed once he’d realised he could simply copy the files he wanted from John’s computer, instead of coming up with increasingly elaborate tricks and stratagems to steal it. So he’d abandoned his plan to go out, buy an identical laptop, disguise himself, bump into John in the street and switch computers. Damn. He’d been itching to try out his Scotsman outfit, complete with ginger wig, too. Still, he’d copied the file, read it thoroughly, and was now printing the Novel.

There was only one way to free himself of this madness brought on by that pathetic penny dreadful, but for that he needed family. He sent out a group text. Sherlock was in the kitchen, making the final preparations when four men, dressed all in basic paramilitary black, carrying assault rifles and wearing gasmasks forced the door open and their way in. Two more had presumably scaled the wall and now slid in through the window. They all dropped to the floor and rolled farther inside the flat and stopped and stared at him slicing up a lemon.

“Daddy One to Mack Daddy,” the leader yelled into his comm link. “Target is acquired. He’s alone and unharmed. Proceed at will.”

Sherlock sighed and raised a world-weary eyebrow as Mycroft strolled in, ever-ready furled umbrella and all.

“Ah, Sherlock. I didn’t know if your message was in code.”

“No. I really did want you to come at once and bring soda water.” Sherlock waggled a bottle of Campari in each hand by way of illustration. He poured most of one bottle into two glasses, and a raised eyebrow from Mack Daddy had Daddy One unclipping a soda siphon from his belt and squirting it into the glasses. He handed over the siphon, saluted, and the team left.

“Nice as it is to have a drink with you, little brother,” said Mycroft, “I have been called away from an important meeting.”

Sherlock dropped his gaze to the crimson smudge on his brother’s neck and handed over a square of kitchen towel.

“M.A.C. Russian Red?” he queried, busy with the drinks.

“Ruby Woo,” corrected Mycroft, wiping.

“And you might want to do your flies up all the way, brother,” said Sherlock.

“And I might not,” parried Mycroft, sinking down on a kitchen stool. “What is all this? Wait. A crate of Campari. Pint glasses. Soda. Lemons. Crazy straws. Not - cocktail brollies?”

“Yes.”

“No! Say it isn’t so! You haven’t convened a special edition of–”

“I have!” And Sherlock whipped off a cloth to reveal a tray of chocolate bunnies wrapped in gold foil.

“The Holmsies! We’re having an award ceremony, now?” Mycroft sucked up most of his drink with an obscene slurp.

“Even so.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“This. Badfic extraordinaire.” Sherlock handed over the Novel, hot off the printer.

‘“Deducing the Heart,’ by John H Watson?” read Mycroft. “What does the _H_ stand for?”

“Oh, you know how some parents call their children after the place where they were conceived, for example?” Sherlock replied.

“Yes, like Brooklyn Beckham.”

“Exactly. Or even after the wine they were drinking the night conception occurred?”

“Oh, like Margaux Hemingway?”

“Indeed. Well, John’s middle name is after the place he was born.”

“Oh. So the _H_ is for–”

“Hospital, yes. Seems his parents didn’t have much imagination.”

“Well, their son’s certainly made up for it,” commented Mycroft. “Unless this is all true?”

Mycroft had unerringly turned to the juiciest sex scene - page 147 - and Sherlock scowled.

“Of course it’s not. The mortuary slabs at Barts don’t have leather restraints, for one thing. Drink up. You’ll need a drink before you even read, let alone before we start handing out the prizes.”

“And will it involve a drinking game?” asked Mycroft from around a wedge of lemon.

“Almost certainly.” Sherlock felt his face crack into his most scary smile.

“Won’t we need Fairfax and Hereward?”

“I sent messages. We can’t wait. It has to be now.”

“Well, absent friends, then,” said Mycroft, clinking his glass against Sherlock’s, and they both raced to finish. Mycroft started reading, and Sherlock poured refills.

“’Tall dark,’” said Mycroft suddenly. “You have to drink whenever there’s ‘tall dark.’”

“Fine. You’re ‘long lean,’” decreed Sherlock, and they both started cackling like mad witches as they read and swigged, reading particularly indigo, never mind purple, patches out to each other, doing all the voices.

“Do your Prince Charles!” demanded Sherlock as Mycroft took up the first envelope to read out the nominees in the INDEPENDENTLY ACTING BODY PARTS category.

“And the first nominee is, ‘Jake’s eyes landed on Sherwood hungrily,’” Mycroft read, in a strangled, wavering upper class accent.

“Then we have, ‘Sherwood’s long lean fingers danced up Jake’s arm.’ This is followed by, oh, my personal favourite, ‘his dick tunnelling through his lover’s hot wet passage.’”

“And the winner is?” Sherlock prompted.

Mycroft opened the envelope. ‘“His tongue impatiently rampaged through the taller man’s mouth while his teeth clashed with his partner’s and his lips formed a suction seal!’”

They had a drink on the strength of it, and the envelope was set on the plinth – the mantelpiece – with a bunny on top.

“Now Sir Alan Rickman reads the nominees in and winner of the DANGLING MODIFIER category,” prodded Mycroft.

“Sir? He was never knighted,” argued Sherlock.

“He was now,” said Mycroft, pushing Sherlock to the sofa. He tapped him on the shoulders with his furled brolly. “Arise, Sir Alan. I dub thee knight of the orgasm-inducing voice.”

“First candidate. ‘Stepping into the shower, Jake’s thoughts turned to Sherwood,’” read ‘Alan.’

“While I love the image of thoughts moving around on their own, that’s a bit tame,” heckled Mycroft.

“Supporting his head in his hands, the hot tears of loss came, dry heaves of gut-wrenching pain,” offered Sherlock/Alan, and Mycroft frowned, trying to parse the sentence for meaning.

“The winner is: ‘Jake’s cock responded with interest, intrigued by the tall dark man!’”

They both cheered, and Sherlock had to close one eye to see the screen on his mobile – it seemed to flicker as he tried to read a message from Fairfax. Abroad and couldn’t come. Huh.

“Now Mrs Thatcher – no, I haven’t got you a blonde wig, manage without – presents the SIMULTANEOUS ACTION offenders!” Sherlock egged his brother on.

‘“Zooming inside to get his gun, Jake shot down the street.’” Mycroft acted out the sentence as he read it, so Sherlock did the same for, ‘“He poured a strong drink, throwing it down his throat in a swift movement and pouring another.’”

The winner was, “moving to the dresser, he pulled out a pair of black leather pants, had a shower and cooked breakfast.”

“Nippy on his feet, that Sherlock fellow,” assessed Mycroft as they stopped for a cigarette break.

Sherlock angled his head for his brother to hold his fringe out of the way for him as he lit up, then corrected, “Wood.”

“Would you? He’s fit, I suppose. Fills out a jumper well, and all that.”

Sherlock let that go and prompted Mycroft to carry on. He noticed his brother swaying during the JK ROWLING AWARD FOR THE MOST ADVERBS ON ONE PAGE – won by page 170 – and frowned as Mycroft sank onto the sofa.

“Oh, come on! It’s the Vertigo award for THE MOST POINT OF VIEW CHANGES IN ONE SCENE AKA PICK A CHARACTER AND STICK WITH IT!” he raged. “I wanted you to do your Cher!”

But his lightweight – ha! – brother had passed out.

And worse: the cure hadn’t worked. No matter how much Sherlock tried to deride the Novel and annotate the scenes with bitter comments ( _Your going nowhere. We’ve been dancing round each other for too long._ Well, it takes two to tango, SH), he was drawn to P147 to re-read the infamous autopsy table scene.

He didn’t think he’d be able to see John in his medical coat again without imagining him with a needleless hypodermic syringe hastily repurposed as a lube launcher in his hand.


	5. Chapter Five

“Er, what’s Mycroft doing passed out drunk on the sofa?” asked John when he came home much later.

“Not much, seeing as he is, as you so astutely observed, passed out drunk,” answered Sherlock.

“Okay. Why is Mycroft passed out drunk on the sofa?” John tried again.

“Oh, he’s a high-functioning alcoholic. He has these occasional binges. It’s all very sad,” improvised Sherlock, checking the kitchen was once again tidy. Ish. If John didn’t want them to employ various members of the homeless as cleaners, he shouldn’t go leaving his wallet about in his drawer the way he did.

“That must be a worry for your mother,” commented John, finishing his health check of the unconscious Mycroft. Sherlock didn’t bother joining in – he had already rifled through Mycroft’s pockets.

“Worse for his husband.”

“WHAT?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“You know, this is strange - I could have sworn I just saw Mycroft down the end of the street,” said John.

“That wasn’t him.”

“What are all those chocolate rabbits?” John pointed at the line on the mantelpiece.

“They’re for science.”

“Can I have one?”

“John, they’re _all_ yours,” replied Sherlock, scooping them into one armful and handing them over. John plonked himself down in his chair and unwrapped one.

“Just let me just bite the ears off. That’s the only bit I like.” Sherlock leant over and snapped the ears off with one hard crunch. Delicious.

“You’ve got some…” John pointed at Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock touched a finger to the side of his mouth. “No, the other. Oh, come here.” John got out a hanky.

Sherlock had to sit down on the arm of the chair because his heart was hammering. Did John know – how could he not? – that they were re-enacting the raunchy pancakes/maple syrup/breakfast scene one-third into _Deducing the Heart_ , wherein Jake first realised his feelings for Sherwood went beyond those of comrade-in-arms he’d reluctantly come to respect after their initial personality clashes?

He held his breath as he moved closer. John spat on his hanky and dabbed it across Sherlock’s mouth and chin.

“That smells of vomit,” said Sherlock in a small voice.

“Yeah, sorry, I was just mopping Mycroft’s sick off his face with it.”

Sherlock got up and went for a little flounce about the living room.

“How was it with Amanda?” he enquired.

“Well, that estate agent bloke of hers is a right weirdo. Kept going on about his firm celebrated diversity and non-traditional lifestyles? He went on and on about the size of the biggest bedroom suite, the, erm…”

“Queen.”

“Bigger.”

“King? Emperor?”

“No... Oh yeah. Elton John. Yeah, that’s it. How the rooms each side of it could be made into separate bathrooms and walk-in wardrobes, so the suite had three, as most domestic arguments come about over sharing, apparently.”

“And you and Amanda?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think we’re better as friends. She’s kind - took me to get my burns re-dressed and everything - but there’s just something lacking.”

 _He means a penis!_ Sherlock stared at John wide-eyed, trying to figure out what John’s revelation could mean for them. Just then, his phone beeped out a text message. Lestrade.

“Come on. Lestrade needs a forensics expert and a medical doctor at the museum with all haste!”

“Why?” Obviously a rhetorical question; John was already wriggling into his jacket.

“Seems Anderson’s lying in a dead faint. I’d say that was a good start to any investigation, but you know Lestrade, such a bleeding heart…”

“What happened?” They were in the street. Sherlock flung his arm up to hail a cab and then shrugged. “Who knows, once the cast of _Try Hard_ get involved?”

 

“And then this.”

Lestrade’s sweeping gesture took in the Natural History Museum’s Central Hall, its dramatic arches, gilt-gleaming walls, stunning terracotta ceiling panels, the several tables where the corporate dinner guests had been seated – and the huge pile of bones that had been a Diplodocus skeleton.

Sherlock surreptitiously kicked the unconscious Anderson and pretended to be pushing him into a more secure recovery position when Donovan caught him.

“But this was just a blind, you see,” continued Lestrade. “While everyone was going crazy over this, one of the guests – we suppose, could have been staff – stole the whopping great diamond engagement ring the chairman was going to present to his girlfriend after the dinner. It was hidden in that ice sculpture thing, timed to be retrieved when it had melted to the right point, or something.”

He pointed at the revolting looking half-melted ice vodka drink luge which had been sculpted into the shape of the company logo. John handed him his hanky to mop his sweating face. Lestrade took it, wiped up, sniffed it, then looked even more ill.

“And these top-tier bankers are so snooty, they won’t let anyone question them! And the chairman’s best mates with the Met commissioner, to make it worse.”

“Really.” Sherlock was sampling the vodka and filling a hip flask.

“Yeah, we’ve got ’em all up there in the Tree Gallery, and they’re all calling their lawyers and threatening to leave. And all the others are too scared of losing their bonus to say anything. It’s such a closed little world. We don’t know anything about it. You remember the trouble Dimmock had with them when I was drying o– in det– on that little holiday?”

“Sherlock, look.”

John took Sherlock over the top table and pointed at the bank’s logo. Both men grinned.

“We can solve this for you, Lestrade, if we just call in an expert…” said Sherlock.

“A consultant calling in a consultant? Are you having me on?”

“Someone who knows this bank inside out…”

“I’ve got the commissioner on my back, the press down my neck– ”

“Well, it’s a miracle you can walk then, Herclueless. Do you want this cleared up or not?”

And Lestrade’s protests and lamentations melted away like the ice luge when Amanda swanned in, told them about the chairman’s affair with his PA who’d been demoted to an HR underling when his girlfriend began to suspect and how the woman scorned had probably even suggested this venue so she could plan all this.

Amanda took her former co-worker into the ladies’ room, got her to confess and hand over the ring, then told the chairman he could have it back if he took matters no further. He reluctantly agreed.

“Right, well, we should all be home in time for _House_ ,” said Amanda, preparing to go.

“I’ll give you a lift, not in a police car, I mean,” stammered Lestrade. “Least I can do.” He smoothed his hair down and straightened his jacket.

“I’ve got my car here. But I could drop you somewhere? If you’ve finished?”

“Yeah, I’m done here,” Lestrade agreed and couldn’t get her out the door quick enough.

Donovan sighed, looking around at all the remaining work.

“Put those down!” she yelled at Sherlock, who was arsing around with the bones. He’d just draped a section of the rib cage over himself as he crouched on all fours and was making little shrieking noises when Anderson came to.

This seemed to be the very last straw ever. Anderson tipped over into a wild-eyed psychosis, yelled a war cry, snatched up a big igneous rock from a display and charged at Sherlock. Only John’s quick thinking in tripping Anderson over allowed Sherlock to make a run for it.

“Come on, John!” he yelled over his shoulder, shaking off the bones, and the two fled, pushing over museum display cases and cabinets to halt the madman chasing them. They’d just got out of the main door and were rounding the building to take a short cut home when with a huge roar, Anderson launched himself through a side window and lunged at them.

“Shoot him!” cried Sherlock.

“Gun’s at home!” panted John as they ran like bloody fuck.

“He knows where we live!” Sherlock shouted as they sped along the road. He spotted Amanda’s new silver Jag in the traffic farther up the street. “Help!” he yelled, pointing behind him as he and John overtook Amanda and Lestrade.

Amanda accelerated, then turned the wheel to swerve onto the pavement and run their pursuer over for them. She and Lestrade got out, exclaiming over the twitching Anderson who was shouting a string of the foulest obscenities and attempting to get to his feet and continue the chase.

“I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure that’s an alcohol induced psychotic disorder!” called Sherlock as he slid into the car, motioning John to do the same. “Your team drink like fishes, Lestrade!”

He pulled out wildly into the lane of traffic, texting THANKS to his rescuer as he drove.

 

“YOU are a bloody awful driver,” commented John as they finally stood, panting, chests heaving, safe inside 221B Baker Street.

“I wasn’t that bad, considering it was my first time,” argued Sherlock, and John slid to the floor giggling.

Seeing him in that position, Sherlock fell suddenly silent. Talk about life imitating bad art imitating life. This was exactly what had happened on P53, when Sherwood and Jake finally made it back to their apartment after eluding the vicious – okay, John had written viscous, but Sherlock was giving him the benefit of the doubt – gang chasing them.

“I’m…so hot,” he whispered, quoting the gist of Sherwood’s impassioned speech, as far as he could remember it. “I’m burning. I need…”

“Here.” John went and fetched him a glass of water.

“I think I’ll have a shower,” announced Sherlock, cutting his losses and skipping several pages ahead. “I bet you want one too, don’t you?” _The long lean body, the moonlight, the …_

“Yeah. Don’t use all the hot water.”

Right. Playing hard to get, was he? If John wanted tantalising and a tiny towel, tantalising and a tiny towel he would get. The bloody tease. There was a name for someone like him, playing fast and loose with Sherlock’s affections like this.

 

Sherlock exited the bathroom and stood leaning against the living room doorway, waiting to attract John’s attention. He didn’t need to wait long.

“Sherlock? What’s got into you?”

Ha! Right on cue. Sherlock opened his mouth to deliver one of the worst puns from the Novel – something along the lines of “Nothing yet. But I’m open…to suggestions,” but John continued:

“Sherlock, are you wearing – is that where the tea towel’s got to? I’ve had to dry up a mug on the kitchen curtains!”

“Take it,” replied Sherlock in his lowest, velvet-est voice.

“I don’t want it now,” said John.

Sherlock stormed off to bed in a filthy temper. It was time, as Jake would put it, to turn all the knobs up to eleven and a half. Sod the bending seductively over a metal autopsy table. Sherlock had to work with what he had to hand. Every long lean centimetre of it. Jake/John would be bloody well _gagging_ for it.


End file.
